Pro tip: I read the fine print on a flat earth video and the source was a fishing forum
Paused a 45 minute video last month and reverse searched the "NASA scientist" quote, turned out to be from a joking post on a bass fishing board from 2011. Anyone else have a trick for quickly checking the actual origin of a claim like that?
A bass fishing board in 2011 is honestly kind of funny, but I gotta push back on treating this like some big crisis of misinformation. Half the stuff people "debunk" on flat earth videos is just random junk some guy typed while waiting for a bite, and calling it out like you cracked a case feels like a lot of effort for not much payoff. The people who believe that video aren't gonna care that the quote came from a fishing forum, they'll just say NASA planted it there to make them look silly. I guess my real question is what you do with the info once you have it, because pointing at a 14 year old joke post doesn't actually prove anything about the shape of the planet. If the trick is just "check where quotes come from," sure, that's fine, but it's not the gotcha people act like it is. Feels more like winning an argument online than changing anyone's mind.